Music

If you have spent much time with Jillian you will know how musical she is. She gets it from her Bumpa. She can struggle to say a word but can move her voice to a single sound enough for you to recognize a song. She loves to sing and it is so cute. She loves to dance and she LOVES to play guitar! She has already eyed up Bumpa's guitar collection and picked one out.

Music has always been a part of my life. Growing up our house was rarely silent, and most of the time is was music. My parent's have a CD collection that would make jaws drop and growing up new music was always coming in. Boy bands were not really a thing in our house. If you wanted to listen to music it needed to be of quality. There needed to be talent. If you could show dad the artist had talent they joined the music collection. I remember the exciting days when BMG music orders would come and the house would be filled with great music for days. There was not Christian music radio station in the are at the time, so we always found our own good stuff.

There is music that moves your heart and touches you forever. Just ask a ITA choir student about "The Lord Bless You and Keep You." I would bet you they will have an emotional response to that song. 

There are those songs that you hear for the first time and remember it forever. You remember the time and the place and who you were with. Those sappy love songs you listened to on a date, or the silly songs you shared with a group of elementary school kids.

A singer I have followed for a long time now has been Mat Kearney. I still remember the first time I heard his song "My Girl America." I was 16 and at church. The song talks about how teenage girls are treated by guys and society. It was before Brent and I started dating for a second time (we dated for a month our freshman year and then started dating again in November of our jr year) I was in a time when I had several guys with bad intentions begging for something I was not giving out. I had been in a relationship with a guy that was not healthy and I came away with scars on my heart and as soon as he left other guys thought they had a chance. More then one physically hurt me after they were turned away. One guy left his hand print on my face for hours after I said no.

I heard the song "My Girl America" it spoke to my heart. It was the reminder that guys needed to love me for me and not for the size 4 waist I had at the time. It was a reminder that "And his palms and sides were pierced with spears, He hung in love just to draw you near."

It was what I needed to hear.

Fast forward several years and his music is still found in our house. Jillian loves dancing to his songs while I put laundry away. I have wanted to go to one of his concerts for years however when I first started listening to him he played in places you needed to be 21 to get into and I was not. After I turned of age to get into over 21 places I was married and broke and then had a sweet sick baby girl. We don't get out much these days. He was one of the few artists that I had wanted to see but had not gotten to (concerts were also a big part of growing up in my house, my dad was always willing to go see a good artist)

I got my wish of wanting to see him last October at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin Run/walk. I was SO excited when I got the email that Mat Kearney would be playing at the finish line. We were participating in the walk/run no matter what (it is an AMAZING cause and our way to say "thank you") but it made it even more exciting to get to see one of my favorite artists. The run/walk was COLD this year, however that meant that not a ton of people hung out after so there was a small group for the concert. It was a lot of fun! It also meant so much to me that an artist that I had been listening to for years was now participating in an event that I hold so dear to my heart.

At the Mat Kearney concert at the end of Brigg's and Al's Run for Children's Hospital of Wisconsin

Fast forward to this week when his new CD came out. Jilli and I went to Target to pick it up. she carried it through the store saying "Kearney!" It was cute.
And this week, like other times before music has hit my life again. We are kinda in a holding pattern with Jillian's lungs right now just waiting for the other shoe to drop. We have used over 200 viles of neb medication this fall/winter. That is A LOT! Yesterday was rough again in the morning. The past week she has done ok for a day or so and then needs a few nebs and then been ok again. I can't tell you the last time we made it a WEEK without a neb treatment. We use to be able to make it several weeks at a time. Yesterday morning she was using a chewy to "brush" her teeth and puked mucus. We were thinking maybe she just pushed it back to far and gagged. Then she was sitting on Bren't lap and puked mucus on him. Her lungs had just been full of junk. Then as she was taking her neb she had a large poop. Then we go to church and part way through the sermon I realize that she is wet. Her med port was open and formula and bile had been flowing onto her and her stroller. That hour of being Jillian's mom was tiring!
There has been some other emotional stuff going on lately. Too many crappy situations that people we love are having to go though and our hearts break for them. Brent and I have both grown up that family is not just the people that share your last name, but the people that you love and care about. I always joke that I was raised by a village (not that my parents did not do a great job at raising Seth and I if I don't say so myself) but they surrounded us with people who also loved us and cared about us. I didn't run to dumb teenagers when stuff was hard in those high school years, because my parents had a support network of people around me that had their heads on their shoulders that I could go to no matter what. But for us, it is also hard when these people hurt because they are family, no matter their last name. I was thinking yesterday how even people that are related are closer then many families are. 2nd cousins have always just been cousins with no reason to separate. I don't call great aunts and uncles "great" because to me they are just aunts and uncles. We are all family. Dysfunctional at times, but family.  
Brent and I were driving home and the song "Let it Rain" came on and as I listened to these words I started to cry:
There's a time meant for war
There's a time meant to pray
There's a time there's a time there's a time there's a time
When all you can say is
Let it rain
Let it rain
Just because it's pouring down doesn't mean we're gonna drown
There's a time there's a time there's a time there's a time
When all you can say is
Let it rain


Its going to "rain." Life is going to get hard. There are going to be situations that are going to suck. But it is being able to say "let it rain" and still find the joy. To still be able to dance in the puddles. Life is going to be hard and none of us has it any harder then anyone else, we all have our own rain. But the difference is...


Do we look to Him to find joy, peace, love in the rain
    







or do we let the rain drown us?

Jillian dancing during the Mat Kearney concert with her feeding tube backpack and tutu